29 A RE.POR TE.R AT LARGE. T HE other morning, I paid a visit o the Y o th Consult tio Serv- Ice, a prIvate organIzatIon to which unmarried girls can turn for guidance when they are faced with the ordeal of becoming mothers. A social agency sponsored by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese of New York, the Service has its main offices in a five-story brownstone struc- ture of ecclesiastical architecture at 27 West Twenty-fifth Street, which was once the rectory of Trinity Church. In a preliminary telephone conversation wIth Mrs. Margaret Stewart Hoag, the executive director of the Service, I had gathered that, as the agency's activitie are spread out all over the metropolitan area, I might expect to cover a lot of ground before the day was over, so I arranged with my hus- band to take the car. Upon entering the building, I found myself in a large reception room, which, though equipped with modern office desks, lamps, and filing cabinets, still managed, with its high ceiling and windows and heavy mahoganv woodwork carved in Vic- L-' torian swirls, to suggest something of the atmosphere of unchallenged peace that once pervaded the place. A re- ceptionist led me across the room and into an office furnished with a walnut desk, upholstered chaIrs, and a cre- tonne-covered day bed, and soft with winter sunshine that came in from a courtyard out back. Mrs. Hoag, a trim, gentle-looking woman, rose from behind the desk to shake hands with me. The Youth Consultation Service, though it stands ready to help young women with all sorts of problems, is one of the few private agencies in the country that are primarily concerned with the problem of the unmarried mother, both before and after she be- comes one. I had told Mrs. Hoag that I was interested in finding out how prevalent illegitimacy is in this city and in these times, and what, in a general way, is being done to make things easier for girls who become pregnant out of wedlock. After settling me in a comfortable chair, Mrs. Hoag began by saying that any statistics relat- ing to the matter are almost certainly in- exact, owing to the secrecy that nearly always surrounds such births. As for the manner in which known cases of illegiti- macy are taken care of, she thought that I could get as clear a picture as any by watching the Youth Consultation Serv- ice in action, and she had arranged for me to drive around later and ee for THE LONELY TIME myself, as far as discretion would permit. "Much of an unmarried mother's ef- forts have to be spent on protecting her- self and her child from the stigma that she finds herself living under, no matter where she goes," Mrs. Hoag said. "Of course, we've made a lot of progress since the days when an unmarried preg- nant girl without funds had only two courses-having her baby in the public workhouse or, if she was lucky enough to be admItted, and promised to stay two or three years, taking refuge in a re- ligious institution with some such name as the Home for Homeless and Hope- less Women. Even today, though, one often hears the expression 'social pariah' used when people get to talking about unmarried mothers. We are always run- ning up against this attitude in our fund- raising. Once, at a theatre benefit we held, a worker of ours overheard one scandalized old gentleman say to anoth- er, 'Did you know that this benefit is for the fallen women of the EpIscopal Church?' Fifty per cent of the young women who come to us for help are un- married mothers, but none of them are 'fallen women.' They might be your daughter or mine." Mrs. Hoag smiled and continued, "Of course, there's little our particular agency can do to change society's attitude. Our job is sImply to help the gIrls through what is certainly one of the most terrifying and lonely ex- periences a human beIng can endure. And in that I believe we've had a fair percentage of success among the ten thousand cases we've dealt with in the forty years or so we've been in existence." Although the Youth Consultation Service receives about a quarter of its annual budget, which amounts to around sixty thousand dollars, from the dIocese, Mrs. Hoag told me, and although all the members of its board of directors, and five members, including herself, of its interracial staff of nineteen, are Epis- copalians, the organization operates as a ""/ ) ',,, ( ( L- D ,.,. 'RD nonsectarian, professionally run social agency, helping young women of all creeds. It was started in 1909 by Father James O. S. Huntington, the first su- perior and founder of the celibate Order of the Holy Cross of the Episcopal Church, who set up a commIttee that included such prominent persons as John M. Glenn, Jacob Riis, Theodore SedgwIck, Thomas Rhinelander, Bishop Gilbert, and Bishop Manning, who was then rector of Trinity parish, to do what they could to improve the wel- fare of women, many of them unmar- ried mothers, in municipal penal in- stitutions. After the N ew York State probation and parole divisions were es- tablished, the socIety gradually turned from prisons to its present, more gener- alized field, and began sending its work- ers to the New York School of Philan- thropy, now the New York School of SocIal \V ork, for training. In 1923, it added a psychiatrist to its staff. "Now- adays, though we are a small agency, " " M H " d " as agencIes go, rs. oag saI, we have, in addition to eleven graduate so- cial workers, a panel of seven psychia- trists and four psychologists available for consultation. We also have a part-time chaplain, to help unmarried mothers who are involved, as so many are, in a painful tangle with spiritual values or a feeling of religious guilt." The Youth Consultation Service, Mrs. Hoag went on to say, tells the girls who come to it about-and helps them get in touch with-whatever serv- u ices in the metropolitan area may be able to assist them. There is no one or- ganization that can in itself provide all the material assistance unmarried mothers may need-temporary em- ployment, financial aid, prenatal care, a place to stay during the last months of pregnancy, hospitalization, and, final- ly, adoption facilities, or, if a girl decides to keep her baby, infant-boarding care while she works to support it. Just as important as the help offered in these practIcal matters is the very real moral support given each girl by the socIal worker the Youth Consultation Service assigns to guide her through the time of her distress. By talking with her so- cial worker, a girl comes to accept the fact that she is an unmarried mother and arrives at a better understanding of her- self, so that she can make something constructive of the experience instead of passively resigning herself to the role of an outcast. I asked Mrs. Hoag if conditions cre- ated by the Second World War had brought about an increase in the number